Having trouble getting consistent measurements in the workshop? In this episode, Harley gives seven woodworking measuring tips to improve your projects' success.
Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe here.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 4.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"
Transcript
Are you having problems with consistent measurements on your projects?
Today, I have 7 woodworking measuring tips here at the House of Hacks.
If we're just meeting, I'm Harley and I believe everyone has a God-given creative spark.
Creativity involves connecting the dots in new ways.
The more dots you have, the more creative you can be.
Here at the House of Hacks, I try to show new connections and give you new dots for your own inspiration.
If this sounds interesting to you, hit the subscribe button and ring the bell notification icon and you'll be notified when new uploads are available.
The first tip is to square the ends that you're going to be measuring from.
This way, if there's any angle, it won't impact the final measurement.
Tip two is to use the same tape measure for your whole project.
This will eliminate any variation from one tape measure to the next, particularly on the ends that move.
Those holes may be slightly different from one tape to the next.
Tip number three is to use a sharp pencil.
This will help minimize any error from the mark itself, both when making the mark and also when lining it up for the cut.
And stay tuned to the end because there's actually a bonus tip at the end.
Tip number four is to use a "V" to mark your cut location rather than a straight line.
This will help reduce the amount of interpretation when lining up to make the cut.
Tip number five is to make one measurement, cut it, make your next measurement, cut it, and so forth.
This will eliminate any drift from the kerf width of the blade.
Tip number six is, if you're making multiple cuts that are the same length, use a stop block.
This way you only have to measure once, it speeds up your production and it also gives you much better consistency.
Tip number seven is to be consistent where you line up the mark with your blade.
The more variance you have in your alignment, the more variation you're going to have in your final product.
And bonus tip number eight is, if you're cutting multiple pieces that are the same length, in addition to using a stop block, if you make multiple cuts at the same time, that'll further reduce the room for error.
Thanks for joining me on this creative journey that we're on.
I'll see you in one of these videos over here that YouTube thinks you'll enjoy.
Ever wonder what's inside a hard disk drive? In this equipment autopsy, Harley takes apart an old hard drive to see what's inside and explain how they work.
Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe here.
They're cheap but are they effective? Today at the House of Hacks, Harley investigates if it makes sense to use moving blankets for acoustic treatment. People have tried different sound absorption techniques to remove room echo from recording spaces. Acoustic foam panels and a sound blanket are two popular items. Moving blankets appear similar to sound blankets and are considered DIY sound absorption materials, but how well do they work in a recording studio for sound absorption? Today we're going to measure the difference between having them and not having them actually makes.
Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, go subscribe and click the bell to get notifications.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: Hot Swing
Transcript
[Door bell]
Oh, FedEx. Thanks!
Do you need to reduce echo in a room for recording?
Today, we're going to look at these moving blankets and measure how well they actually work for this application.
[Introduction]
Hi! Harley here.
I'm down here in the workshop which is in the unfinished portion of our basement.
It's got concrete walls, concrete floors, and from this app we can see we've got 0.65 seconds of decay time.
To try to get that down, I got some moving blankets from Amazon, very cheap, and I want to see if this is actually going to make a difference in the echo in this space where I can hang them from the ceiling, drape them around the workshop, as I'm recording to try to get the echo down.
Let's open it up and give it a try.
[Opening package]
There are twelve blankets for less than $60 from Amazon.
I'll leave a link in the description below.
By comparison, you can get an acoustic blanket that's marketed as such for $75 for just one.
But the question is: does this inexpensive option really make a difference?
I haven't spent the money to compare the difference between the moving blankets and the one that's really designed for the purpose, but I can compare the difference between with and without these moving blankets.
First, I installed an application on my phone to actually measure the echo.
And as we saw in the opening, without the blankets, the echo is 0.65 seconds.
I'm going to use some spring clamps to hang the blankets around the workshop.
[Hanging and draping blankets]
So, I'm really impressed!
Depending on the test, it was between 0.19 and 0.43 [sic] seconds delay after adding the blankets.
That's between...
...about a third on the high end and not quite half on the higher end.
So, yeah, these blankets really do make a difference.
How that compares to an acoustic blanket? I don't know.
I'm not going to spend that much money, but they do make a difference.
That's a good thing.
I'll certainly be using these in the future when I'm recording to reduce the echo in here.
I believe everyone has a God-given creative spark.
If yours leans towards marking things and you're interested in future House of Hacks workshop related videos, hit the round House of Hacks icon over there and then hit the bell notification and YouTube will let you know next time I upload something.
And down below are some videos YouTube thinks you might be interested in.
Wondering about the differences between lithium grease vs silicone grease? In this video, Harley compares silicone grease vs lithium grease, explains the differences, applications and uses of each.
What is dielectric grease and why should I use it? https://youtu.be/GXyRYArHryU
Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, go subscribe and click the bell to get notifications.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: Hot Swing
Transcript
Are you like Jeremy and wondering what the difference is between lithium grease and silicone grease?
We're talking about that right now in this video.
[Introduction]
Hi. Harley here.
I recently had a comment asking about the difference between dielectric grease and silicone grease and also how that compares to lithium grease.
So let's talk about those differences today.
Lithium [grease] is:
generally petroleum based,
it adheres well to metal,
it's non-corrosive,
it's moisture resistant,
it handles heavy loads really well,
and it's resistant under high temperatures. It doesn't break down.
Silicone grease is:
of course silicone based,
it adheres to a wide variety of surfaces,
it inhibits corrosion,
resists moisture,
and comes in various formulations.
A couple notable formulations are ingestible ones where it's safe to be used in dental tools and plumbing for potable water.
Another formulation is dielectric grease where it's used in applications where you have high current and you need something that has insulation properties.
Because lithium grease is petroleum based, it's not recommended for use around plastics and rubber where it'll cause these to prematurely fail.
These applications are better served by silicone grease.
Silicone grease, on the other hand, works better in low temperature, low stress applications around plastics and rubber.
Common examples around the house for using lithium grease might be for garage door openers and hinges.
Whereas applications for silicone grease might be sliding doors and windows, seals around waterproof flashlights and plumbing fixtures.
So I want to get back to Jeremy's question about using silicone grease for brake caliper applications. In this case, neither lithium nor silicone grease is really ideal.
Lithium because it's petroleum based will cause decay in the rubber parts of the brake system and silicone grease isn't really designed for that high temperature/high stress application.
There are actually specially formulated greases for brake applications that are designed to handle both the high temperature and high stress and also coming into contact with the plastics and rubbers in the brake system.
Thanks Jeremy for the question and for everybody else for joining me on this creative journey we're on.
If you're interested in making things out of wood, metal, electronics, photography or other things like this in the workshop, hit the subscribe button and then hit the bell notification icon and YouTube will notify you next time I release a video.
Continuing the Bits of Binary series, this episode of House of Hacks shows how to multiple binary numbers. Harley shows how binary number multiplication is as easy as 1 x 1 = 1 and 1 x 0 = 0.
This is the fifth in a series dealing with binary numbers. All the videos in this series can be found on the Bits of Binary playlist.
Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe on YouTube.
All music by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com and under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: Hot Swing
Transcript
Do you want to multiply binary numbers together?
In this episode of the House of Hacks, we'll look at how easy this operation really is.
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-It-Yourselfers. Harley here.
The playlist up here contains previous episodes where we looked at what binary numbers are, how to count in binary, how to convert between the more familiar decimal base 10 numbers and binary, and how to do addition and subtraction on binary numbers.
In this episode we'll look at multiplying binary numbers together.
Back when we learned how to multiply decimal numbers in school, we had to memorize a table that looked something like this.
If you know this table, you already know everything there is to know about multiplying binary numbers.
The cool thing is multiplication in binary is exactly the same as decimal except you only use these two rows and columns from the table you've already learned.
And the process is exactly the same too.
Let's take a look at a couple examples and then a couple short cuts.
Let's take seven times three.
Just like in decimal, we first multiply the units and write that down under the equal bar.
Since we're multiplying by 1, we just write down the first number.
Then we add a zero placeholder and multiply by the next column.
Since we're again multiplying by 1, we write down the first number again.
And finally we add the two numbers together to get the total.
1 and 0 is 1.
1 and 1 is two, which in binary is one zero, so we write the 0 and carry the 1.
1 plus 1 plus 1 is three represented in binary as one one, so write the 1 and carry the 1.
Again, 1 plus 1 is 10 so write the 0 and carry the 1.
1 and 0 is again 1 so write the 1 and we're done.
Let's double check this by converting the result to decimal.
Remember each column is a power of two and we add the column values that contain a one.
Looking at the values of the columns we have 16 plus 4 plus 1 which is 21.
Let's do another one. Five times five.
Starting with the units, we multiply by the first number times one and write that down.
We put down a zero placeholder for the next column but notice we're now multiplying by zero.
So we ignore that column since zero times anything is zero, and add another placeholder and move to the next column.
We're again multiplying the first number times one and write it down.
Now we're ready to add.
One and zero is one.
Zero and zero is zero.
One and one is two, so write down the zero and carry the one.
One and zero is one.
Finally zero and one is one.
Giving us the result 11001.
Again, we can verify this by converting to decimal.
So we have sixteen plus eight plus one giving us 25.
There are two shortcuts we can observe.
First, since we're always multiplying by either zero or one, the numbers we're adding together are always nothing for zero or the first number shifted by the column that contains a one in the second number.
So this is a really mechanical process of just writing down the first number multiple times shifted as needed and then adding the numbers together.
As an example, we'll take this random number and multiply it by this random number.
We write down the first number with the units under the second number where the columns contain ones.
We can add placeholder zeros if it makes it easier to keep track of the columns.
And then just add.
The second shortcut is related to multiplying by powers of two.
Let's go back to decimal for a minute.
You probably know the shortcut for multiplying by a power of ten.
For ten, one hundred, one thousand, and so forth, all we have to do is add the appropriate number of zeros to the number we're multiplying.
Three times ten is thirty.
Three times a hundred is three hundred, and so forth.
Binary has a similar concept except it's related to powers of two: two, four, eight, sixteen and so on.
Every time a zero is added to the end of a number, it's the same thing as multiplying by two.
So if we are multiplying by two, we add one zero.
If we're multiplying by four we add two zeros, and so forth.
And since powers of two in binary look just like powers of ten in decimal, we really don't have to think about it.
All we have to do is add zeros and we're done.
In this episode, we looked at how binary multiplication is using all the same ideas as decimal multiplication we're already familiar with.
We also looked at two easy shortcuts to mechanically handle the multiplication and multiplying by powers of two.
Binary is a common non-decimal numeric base, but really, any number can be used as a base for a number system.
Leave a comment below if you've worked with number bases besides decimal and for what purposes.
If this is your first time here at House of Hacks: Welcome, I'm glad you're here and I'd love to have you subscribe.
Through these videos I hope to inspire, educate and encourage makers in their creative endeavors.
In spite of this series, usually this involves various physical media like wood, metal, electronics, photographs and other similar materials.
So subscribe and I'll see you again in the next video.
Need to replace a dishwasher? In this episode of House of Hacks, Harley shows how to install a Bosch 500 series dishwasher after first removing the existing dishwasher. Knowing how to remove and replace a dishwasher is useful information for a home owner. It’s not intimidating once you see how easy they are to install under a counter top.
Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe on YouTube.
All music by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com and under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: Hot Swing
Incidental: Beach Bum, Guiton Sketch, Happy Alley and Pump Sting
Transcript
Need to replace an old dishwasher with a new one?
Today at the House of Hacks, we're going to do exactly that!
[Intro]
For the last six months or so, every once in a while we'd come home and the dishwasher would have leaked. It was a random occurrence. It only happened on rare occasions.
It was pretty frustrating to find. I spent quite a bit of time trying to track it down. I actually went so far as to pull the dishwasher out from the cabinet and put it up on 2 x 4s for a week and we ran it that way to try to isolate where it was leaking. And of course, in that time it never leaked and my wife finally got frustrated with having it out in the middle of the kitchen and asked me to put it back.
Last weekend we came home from running errands and found it had leaked again. It had finished shortly before we got home and I thought maybe it was still wet where it had been leaking and so I immediately pulled it out from the cupboard. I couldn't find any leaks. I was able though to trace the water back from where it was wet on the floor and where it wasn't wet on the floor to kind of get the general region and did some more investigation. I pulled a flashlight out and I did find the tell tale signs of leaking water where you have that white, dried, crustiness from dried water that had been leaking and had since dried. And in tracking it down I found a seam in the tub that had some discoloration in it and that was right where the water was coming out on the other side. And so obviously there's rust through in that seam and there's really no repairing that kind of thing from a practical standpoint. I could kind of hack it with some epoxy or silicone gel, but that's just sort of a stop gap measure and eventually I'm going to have to replace the dishwasher. So I decided to go ahead and do that.
To do this project, I think it's going to require three tools. I may be wrong, but thinking through the project, I think there's three things we're going to need. There's a screwdriver that we'll need to disconnect it from the counter top and also, if there's electrical connections that have screws, they're probably going to be Philips. I think that's the only thing we need Philips for.
The water inlet is probably a compression fitting which will use a 5/8ths inch open end wrench. If it's not a compression fitting, it's probably a hose clamp which again will use the screwdriver.
And finally, I believe the drain has a spring clamp that we'll remove with pliers.
I think that's all we need. Three tools.
If any more are required, when I get into it, I'll talk about that in the process of needing them.
The way this model dishwasher is held in is there's two screws on the top that hold it to the counter top and there's a dust panel on the bottom by the floor that needs to come off so we can move it around.
A total of four screws to pull out and then it should just be able to slide right out.
Let's get to it.
[Turn off the water]
[Turn off the power]
[Loosen dust cover]
[Remove screws]
[Double check there's no power]
[Disconnect drain]
[but put down a towel first]
[Disconnect water supply]
[Access electrical]
[Disconnect wires]
[Remove old machine]
So you saw with the old dishwasher, it had a built in junction box in the bottom front corner that the electrical ran into.
The new one has a separate junction box that is supposed to be mounted away from the dishwasher and then it has this cord that has an end that plugs into the dishwasher.
From a mechanical standpoint, this is a lot easier because I can... I'll have to cut off the old knarly ends and get some new wire here, but there are some screw terminals in there that I'll just screw right into. It'll be quick and easy. But I don't have a good place to mount this. The way the cupboards are designed, the closest place to mount this where it's going to be accessible is further away than the length of this cord. And so, it's just going to float around in the back there.
Let's get this hooked up.
[Trim off old wire]
[Strip insulation]
[Affix strain relief]
[Attach wire to terminals]
[Tighten screws]
[Put on cover]
The water hook up has been a little bit more challenging than I expected.
The dishwasher has a 3/4" MPT fitting on the back of it and my plumbing has a 3/8" flex pipe. So it didn't work directly in there obviously. So I had to go buy a fitting specially for this project that is a 3/4" MPT fitting to a 3/8" compression fitting.
I'm going to put this on and first of all I need to cut off the old compression fitting on the piping because it can't be used again.
[Install fitting]
[Connect water supply line]
OK, now we're going to connect the drain.
This comes from the dishwasher and it has a section for either 1/2" or 3/4" drain pipe.
This pipe is 3/4" so we're going to put the hose clamp on the 3/4" section and push this in there until it's good and seated.
And that's I think as far as it's going to go.
It seems like it should go a little bit further... but maybe not.
Now we put the hose clamp on.
And tighten it down.
I must say I really like the old hose clamp where it was a spring clamp.
It was so much more convenient.
[Install the mounting clips]
[Push the dishwasher under the counter]
OK, now we get the joy of leveling it.
It seems to be in there OK.
All the water and drain stuff, electrical seems good.
It's pretty well centered.
Now it just needs to get leveled and needs to get lifted up actually.
I've got probably almost an inch gap here at the top.
But that's what the leveler feet are for.
OK, to turn this, turn the feet on the right and left to level it side to side.
And to level it front to back, there's a screw right here in the middle you turn to get the front and back level.
[Screw in mounting screws]
[Attach dust panel]
OK. Well, I finally got it done and in.
That was a lot more work than I expected.
The last dishwasher that I'd taken out was one I had also installed 10 years ago or so probably. Maybe 12 years ago.
It was really pretty simple. It was just straight forward: take out the old, put in the new and it was done.
This one there was "some assembly required" as they say.
I had to pick up that part from Home Depot.
I had to wire in things, it was just a little bit more involved.
It was just more work.
It took a lot longer than I expected.
And it took more tools than I expected.
So the final tools:
Scissors to open packaging.
Level to level it.
Tube cutter to cut off the old compression fitting that I didn't need.
A couple adjustable wrenches to level it.
A Philips and a straight screwdriver.
Wire cutters to trim up the wiring.
And a box knife to trim the insulation.
And a 5/8ths inch wrench to tighten up the water connection.
And pliers to put in those little clips. The clips on this particular dishwasher you can put either on the top or on the sides so you had to install those. Use pliers to do that.
That was it. All in all, not a tough job. It just took about 4 hours to do, and that included having to film and setup.
So that slowed it down a little bit. Probably a good 3 hours to do this even if I hadn't been filming.
A contact recently asked "How do I select a power supply for my project?" Once a project moves past the prototyping state using a battery, picking the power supply is a critical element of a personal electronics project. In this episode of House of Hacks, Harley discusses the four items to consider when choosing a surplus power supply.
What do turkey basters and power supplies have to do with each other? And why am I in the kitchen? We're going to talk about all this today at the House of Hacks.
[Music]
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers. Harley here.
I was recently asked about selecting a power supply for a hacked together project. There are four things when selecting a power supply that you need to pay attention to.
The first two are simple. The last two are a little be more complex but not too bad.
First is the input, you need to make sure that your power supply is appropriate for what you're plugging it into. For the most part you're going to be using locally supplied power supplies, probably surplus stuff that you've scavenged, and in that case it's going to work because it's designed for your local environment. In the United States that's going to be 110 to 120 volts AC. Pretty much anywhere else in the world, with a few exceptions, it's 220-240 volts AC. So the first item, while it's there and you need to be aware of it, it's really simple.
The second item has to do with the output. Power supplies can either output volts AC, indicated by VAC or a squiggly line or it can output in volts DC, indicated by VDC or a straight line. And you need to select the type of current that's appropriate for your project. Most, if you're doing low-voltage stuff, most of those are going to be DC, but depending on what you're working on, AC may be appropriate for your case.
The last two items are volts and amps. And these are similar to properties of water systems so we'll look at that here in a minute with the turkey baster and the sink.
But in short, volts have to do with, kind of, the pressure that the electrons are pushing into your circuit. And you need to make sure that this is appropriately ranged for your circuit you're working with. Generally circuits have a minimum and maximum voltage. You need to make sure that the voltage coming from the power supply fits within those parameters.
And finally there's amperage. Amperage is more like capacity. So it has to do with, as long as your power supply meets minimum requirements for your circuit, you're good to go. Your power supply can provide more amps than you need, it just can't provide less. So, make sure you know what your circuit requires and your power supply at least meets that minimum.
For example, a circuit that requires 250 milliamps (ma) would work just fine with a power supply that supplies 250 ma, 500 ma or 100 amps. Any of those would work just fine. However, if the power supply says it's rated for 100 ma, that's going to be too little and your circuit won't work right.
So let's go look at the sink and see how water correlates to volts and amps.
OK. As I mentioned, volts have to do with the amount of pressure and amps have to do with the capacity.
If you think about a water system, there's a whole lot of capacity here. The city has probably thousands of acre-feet of water that are sitting behind these pipes. They can provide pretty much all the capacity that we need for our little simple demonstration here.
It also has a lot of pressure. We control the pressure by the knob here, the lever, and if we put this on here and we give it just a little bit. This would be like not enough volts where we have a really weak stream here and the circuit isn't going to work right because it just doesn't have enough oomph to make it work.
If we increase the pressure to just the right amount, we get a nice flow without overdoing things and we reach a point of equilibrium here where the equivalent of the circuit is going to work just fine because we have the right amount coming in, not too much, not too little and everything's going to work just fine. And this is kind of equivalent to the volts controlled by the lever here.
If we increase the voltage too much though, what we end up with is a lot of leaks. And when you have leakage in electronics, that's a really bad thing. Things tend to blow up, burn up, magic smoke escapes, all that kind of good stuff. So you really don't want to put too much voltage to your circuit. You want to have just the right amount of volts that you get a good flow like that without having too much.
But now in all these cases, regardless of how much voltage I had, how much pressure I had coming out of the circuit, I still had huge, huge, vast amounts of water sitting in reservoirs behind these pipes. And that's equivalent to your amps. Your circuit will only use the amount of amps that it needs, regardless of how much capacity your power supply has.
So in summary, there are four things to look at: the input voltage and current and the output current, volts and amps. Make sure that you have the sufficient volts within the range that the circuit is designed for and that you have at least the minimum number of amps that are required by the circuit and you're good to go.
What is dielectric grease? Why should I use dielectric grease? How do I use it? Dielectric grease is something used on automotive electrical connections. It is relatively unknown and has some misinformation floating around regarding it. In this House of Hacks video, Harley talks about the what, why and how of using it.
With Tomahawk DIY, Mike is building a business dedicated to helping people Build Better Lives. A substantial portion of revenue is donated to organizations that focus on helping people build better lives in some of earth's most dire circumstances. Visit his About page to learn more about the mission of Tomahawk DIY and use this Amazon Affiliate link to help support that work: Buy Dielectric Grease.
Hey, I wonder if Harley knows his brake light is out. That could cause a real problem.
[Door slam]
Hey Harley.
Yeah.
Did you know your brake light's out?
No, I didn't know that. There's a car store right around the corner. Why don't we go get some parts.
Yeah, it's a really easy fix. I'll show you how.
Awesome. Sounds great!
[Buying parts]
Today at the House of Hacks, we're going to talk about replacing light bulbs and using dielectric grease.
[Music]
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers. Harley here.
This is Mike from Tomahawk DIY and we're going to be talking about two things. One on his channel about how to replace a brake light and on my channel this videos going to be about what dielectric grease is and why you should use be using it.
In Mike's video, we put some dielectric grease in the fitting before putting in the new bulb.
In this video, I want to talk about what dielectric grease is and why we used it.
While shooting the bulb changing video, we ran into a problem that is a great example of why dielectric grease really should be used.
We'd taken the old bulb out, put the new one in and put the socket back in the tail light assembly.
When we tested it, it didn't work. After some checking, I found corrosion on the socket connectors.
Dielectric grease helps inhibit this type of corrosion.
If these had grease put on them at the factory, they wouldn't have corroded this way.
So what is dielectric grease?
It's a silicon based grease that is non-curing and non-conductive.
Coming out of the tube, it has a, well, greasy type consistency, and being non-hardening, it maintains this consistency.
It stays this way and doesn't get hard or setup.
Here I have the multi-meter here setup to measure resistance.
When I put a drop on the probes, we can see it is non-conductive until I press the probes together and they make metal-to-metal contact.
Bare metal will have a chemical reaction to the oxygen in the air, called oxidation or corrosion.
Oxidation is less conductive than the metal, causing the flow of electricity to be reduced.
If there's not much oxidation, the reduction isn't enough to cause a problem.
However, in the harsh, sometimes wet, environment of a car, oxidation can build up over time to be a problem.
At best, it will decrease voltage causing lights to dim and other devices not to work properly.
In extreme cases, it can cause increased heat as the current attempts to break through and cause plastic to melt, shorts and sparks and, in the worse case, a fire.
Dielectric grease does a couple things to help combat these problems.
First, it's an insulator and helps prevent arcing between air gapped metal.
In high-voltage situations, this can help reduce voltage leakage, like in the engine's ignition system.
But in the low voltage situation of lighting, this isn't it's primary benefit.
In normal use, any place there's air gapped terminals, the air is sufficient insulation.
It's primary benefit comes as a non-hardening sealant.
When it's liberally applied to an electrical connection, it coats the metal and surrounds the terminals.
But being squishy, it is pressed out of the way on the metal-to-metal contact points.
This creates a sealed electrical connection that prevents both air and water from getting to the metal.
Keeping the water out of the connector helps eliminate short circuits and keeping the air out limits corrosion from happening.
It also helps the plastic and rubber parts of the connectors.
The oils in the grease help minimize gassing off of the plastic's oils.
This in turn helps prevent the plastic from getting brittle.
It also lubricates rubber fittings to let them seal better but not fuse.
All these things combined make the connector easier to take apart next time the bulb needs to be replaced.
I've seen some more expensive cars with dielectric grease on fittings from the factory.
And I've heard of people who will go through their vehicle when they first get it and put grease on all the connectors.
Usually these are people who put their vehicles in unusually harsh circumstances, particularly off-road or marine environments.
Personally, I use it whenever I replace something, but I don't go out of my way to take things apart specifically to add grease to them.
But given this most recent situation, I may rethink that.
If this is your first time here at House of Hacks: Welcome, I'm glad you're here and would love to have you subscribe.
I believe everyone has a God-given creative spark.
Sometimes this manifests through making things with a mechanical or technical bent.
Through this channel I hope to inspire, educate and encourage these types of makers in their creative endeavors.
Usually this involves various physical media like wood, metal, electronics, photography and other similar materials.
If this sounds interesting to you, go ahead and subscribe and I'll see you again in the next video.
Thanks for joining me on our creative journey.
Now, go make something. Perfection's not required. Fun is!
Replacing the battery on Apple Macbook Air is really simple and only requires a couple minutes work. In this episode, Harley shows the couple steps needed to change the battery in an mid-2011 MacBook Air and restore it to its original capacity.
Rechargeable batteries have a finite lifetime, wear out as they’re used and need to be replaced. Unlike PC laptops, MacBook’s give a warning when the battery approaches end-of-life and needs to be replaced. Applications like CoconutBattery give additional information.
Rechargeable batteries wear out over time. MacBooks will give a warning when their battery is approaching their end of life and won’t hold a charge. Today at the House of Hacks we’re going to see how easy it is to replace one of these aging batteries.
[Music]
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers. Harley here.
If you like to make things out of items such as wood, metal and electronics, subscribe to the House of Hacks channel to get notified of future videos.
My buddy Rich’s 5 year old MacBook Air, of mid-2011 vintage, started acting a bit strange. Instead of going to sleep when he closed the lid it started hibernating. And then, because it was hibernated, rather than coming on instantly when he opened the lid, it took a number of seconds to wake back up. And then he finally got this "service battery" warning.
After calling the local repair depot and finding it was going to be a week or so to get it replaced, and with an upcoming photoshoot in a couple days where he really needed it, he asked me to fix it for him. He got a new battery off of Amazon and brought it to the shop to get it replaced.
This particular MacBook’s battery is model number A1496 and it is available from a number of different vendors. Mac batteries are a bit more complex to replace than most Windows-based laptops, but they’re still not to too bad. Let’s take a look at the simple process.
First, for many models, Apple used security screws rather than the run of the mill straight or Phillips screws, so screwdrivers for Pentalobe screws, as well as the more common Torx, are needed for this battery replacement.
Fortunately, Rich purchased a kit that included all the screwdrivers needed to replace the battery. If you don’t get a kit with the screwdrivers, make sure you have the ones you need already on hand. These screwdrivers are not high-quality things you’ll use forever, but they are sufficient to get the one time job done.
After opening the kit, I used the Pentalobe screwdriver to open the bottom of the laptop. There are two long screws next to the screen’s hinge and short screws around the rest of the perimeter.
Once the screws are out, the bottom just lifts off, exposing the battery.
Now, there are 5 Torx screws that hold the battery in. They are at the four corners and one in the center. Again, the two next to the hinge are longer and the other three are shorter.
When the screws are all out, gently lift the battery up and disconnect it. The connector has a plastic tab to pull on. Gently tug on this straight back towards the front edge of the laptop. Do not lift up away from the laptop’s motherboard.
Putting the new battery in is just the reverse of this process.
Attach the connector and make sure it’s seated. Then place the battery back in place so the screw holes line up and replace the screws. Remember, the longer screws go next to the hinge. Be careful not to cross thread or over tighten the screws. They just need to be snug, not super tight.
And now might be a good time to blow some canned air around the fan and vents to make sure there isn’t any dust bunnies hiding around.
Finally put the bottom back on and replace the screws. Again, the long screws go next to the hinge and take care not to cross thread or over tighten them.
Turn the laptop over, and turn it on and admire your work.
If you use an application like coconutBattery, you can see details of the battery's status. This utility can take a snapshot of the status for comparison. Here we see the before and the after. The old battery was to the point where it only charged to 70% of what it was designed for. And we can see the new one goes to 100%.
The instructions that came with the battery indicated it should be discharged to 5% and then recharged to 100% several times in a row. I’m not quite sure why this is recommended. My understanding of the Lithium based battery chemistry is this isn’t needed. It may be a left-over remnant of a recommendation from the Nickel and Lead based battery chemistries or perhaps it’s to calibrate the battery’s charge controller. In any case, understand this is the recommended procedure.
And now this laptop is ready for another 5 years of service.
Join me in the comments below to let me know if you found this helpful.
If this is your first time here at House of Hacks: Welcome, I’m glad you’re here and would love to have you subscribe. I believe everyone has a God-given creative spark. Sometimes this manifests itself through making things with a mechanical and technical bent. Through this channel I hope to inspire, educate and encourage these types of makers in their creative endeavors. Usually this involves various physical media like wood, metal, electronics, photography and other similar materials. If this sounds interesting to you, go ahead and subscribe and I’ll see you again in the next video.
Thanks for joining me on our creative journey. Now, go make something. Perfection’s not required. Fun is!
A pair of momentary switches become a latching on/off switch as Harley expands on a previous video about remote controlling a shop vac. This is the first of several in a modular switching system to remote control shop equipment using the PowerSwitch Tail II.
The central part of this system is the PowerSwitch Tail. It contains an electronically controlled switch to turn things on an off. There are a large number of ways to control this. In this episode, we introduce a modular system to allow different types of switches to be used to control the shop vac (or any other type of appliance).
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Special effects: livingroom_light_switch by AlienXXX at http://freesound.com
Transcript
Last year I showed an easy way to remote control shop equipment using a PowerSwitch Tail, a couple batteries, a switch and some wire.
Today at the House of Hacks I’m going to show how I made a push-on/push-off switch that mimics the way a lot of shop equipment are controlled.
[Music]
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers. Harley here.
Just a quick reminder, if you haven’t done so already, subscribe to the House of Hacks channel to get notified of future videos.
Last year I made a video responding to a comment by Rob about how I made the remote control switch on my central shop vac system.
In that video, I showed the core design element: the PowerSwitch Tail and how to use it with a simple battery operated switch.
Today i’m going to show a different way to control the same PowerSwitch Tail by eliminating the batteries and using a switch with two buttons: one to turn the tool on and one to turn it off.
This is similar to how many shop tools are controlled. It also has the additional feature of being able to be expanded upon in the future.
If you recall, the PowerSwitch Tail requires 3 to 12 volts DC applied to these two connectors to cause the tool to turn on.
Batteries are of course one source of power for this but they need to be replaced on occasion.
Since I didn’t want to deal with replacing batteries, in my application I decided to use a surplus wall wart style power supply. I had a bunch of these lying around and figured this would be a good application for one of them.
I plugged it into the same outlet I plug the PowerSwitch Tail into.
I connect the low voltage power supply to two connectors on an RJ-11 jack.
Then I connect the other two connectors on the RJ-11 jack to the two connectors on the PowerSwitch Tail.
This allows me to use a phone wire as an extension cord.
For the switch's end, I put another RJ-11 jack in a project box. This project box can now have any type of switch mechanism in it I want and provides a nice modular way to use different types of switches.
For example, I could put in a toggle switch just like I showed in the last video.
Simply wire the negative side of the power to the negative input on the PowerSwitch Tail and wire a switch between the positive side of the power and the positive input for the PowerSwitch Tail.
However, since we have power in the project box, we aren’t limited to just a simple mechanical switch.
We can build circuitry that controls the PowerSwitch Tail.
The first thing I’ve made is a simple latching switch.
Similar to the switches on many tools, like my drill press and my bandsaw, I press the green button to turn on my vacuum and push the red button to turn it off.
Inside the box is a simple flip flop.
A flip flop is a type of circuit with two inputs, called Set and Reset. It also has two outputs, called Q and bar Q, or also known as not Q. It’s just the inverse of Q.
The inputs receive momentary pulses.
If the pulse is on Set, then Q goes high and bar Q goes low.
If the pulse is on Reset, then Q goes low and bar Q goes high.
If we consider just one output, Q, we can see Set causes it to turn on and Reset causes it to turn off. It just flip flops between the two positions.
Flip flops can be made with a variety of different circuits ranging from discrete components to various types of integrated circuits.
I happened to have a Quad 2-Input NOR gate chip in my parts bin so I used that.
But I could just as easily have used NAND gates, a chip with a dedicated flip-flop circuit in it, or a couple of transistors and resistors.
Once I had the circuit built, all I had to do was put it in the box and wire it up.
The switches are wired with pull down resistors. This allows the inputs to be normally low and go high when the button is pressed.
The green button connects to the Set input. The red button connects to the Reset input.
The negative input to the PowerTail Switch goes to the negative power connector.
Since I’m switching the positive side of the power, I’m using a PNP transistor.
Its base connects to the flip-flops Q output.
The PowerSwitch Tail’s positive input goes to the transistor’s collector.
And finally, the transistor’s emitter connects to the positive power connector.
In this configuration, the transistor acts as the switch for the PowerSwitch Tail’s power.
When it’s all put together, pushing the green button turns on the appliance and pushing the red button turns it off.
Since this switch system is modular, I have plans to build other switches too.
The next one is a current sensing switch so the vacuum will automatically turn on when a tool is in use and will turn off, after a short time delay, when the tool is turned off.
I’d love to know in the comments below if the level of detail I presented here was too much, just right or too little.
If this is your first time here at House of Hacks: Welcome, I’m glad you’re here and would love to have you subscribe.
I believe everyone has a God-given creative spark.
Sometimes this manifests through making things with a technical or mechanical bent.
Through this channel I hope to inspire, educate and encourage these types of makers in their creative endeavors.
Usually this involves various physical media like wood, metal, photography, electronics, like in this video, and other similar materials.
If this sounds interesting to you, go ahead and subscribe and I’ll see you again in the next video.
Thanks for joining me on our creative journey.
Now, go make something. Perfection’s not required. Fun is!
Histograms can be found in Photoshop for use in post-processing, not only on the back of our cameras when making the exposure. In this final episode of the Histogram series, Harley shows the different places histograms show up and what they represent within the image.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"
by Kevin MacLeod at Incompetech
Sound effect: living-room-light-switch by alienxxx at FreeSound
Transcript
Histograms are an important tool when making an image in-camera. They also have their use during post-processing. In this episode of House of Hacks, I talk about how they work in Adobe’s Photoshop.
Hi Makers, Builders and Photographers. Harley here.
This is one in a series of videos about understanding and using the histogram. The others can be found in this playlist. I also have a playlist of other topics related to photography.
Today, we'll look at histograms in Photoshop. In this application, histograms tell us the same information as they do on the back of the camera but instead of just one histogram, Photoshop has several because of the different ways to view the image.
First off, if the histogram isn't visible, go to the Windows menu and select Histogram or you can click this icon.
By default it shows a little view like this. Click on this option drop down and select "All channels view" to see multiple histograms, one for each channel.
In many images all the channels will be very similar. But in some instances they might be quite different.
The split channels can be useful in situations where one color is predominant in your image. They help you see how adjustments to the image impact each color to help you know when one channel might start clipping, losing detail in the final image.
There's also this combo box that controls what is displayed in the top histogram. Personally, I like to show luminosity.
These histograms show the information for the image with all the adjustment layers applied. It’s the final histogram for the processed image.
As you turn adjustments on and off, you can see the histograms change accordingly.
Histograms also show up in some adjustment layers such as levels and curves.
The histograms that show in adjustments are the histogram for the image as that layer sees it, taking into consideration the original image and any layers below the current layer. This means adjustment layers above and below the current layer may have different histograms than the current layer.
As an example, this levels adjustment layer has a histogram for the original image.
If we make some adjustments and then add a curves adjustment above it, the curves layer shows a histogram based on the changes made by the levels adjustments.
If we make some adjustments on the curves layer, we can see the main histogram shows the results.
Also, if we make adjustments in a particular color channel, we can see how those changes impact that channel in the global histogram view.
If our adjustments are too extreme, we can see in the channel’s histogram that we start to lose details in this particular channel without the typical clipping showing in the main histogram curve.
In conclusion, I’d love to hear in the comments below about your experiences with the histogram, particularly during post-processing.
If this is your first time here at House of Hacks: Welcome. I’m glad you’re here. We’d love to have you subscribe. Through this channel I hope to inspire, educate and inform makers in their creative endeavors. Usually this involves various physical media like wood, metal, electronics, photographs and other similar materials. Thanks for joining me on our creative journey. So subscribe and I’ll see you again in the next video.
Now, go make something. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just have fun!
The histogram is a powerful tool for the photographer. In this tutorial, Harley shows how to use this feature found on most cameras to quickly and easily setup lighting to isolate a subject on a pure white background. Properly done, a subject isolated on a white background is simple to cut out to composite into another image.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Incidental: "Sweeter Vermouth" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Sound effect: living-room-light-switch by alienxxx at http://freesound.org
Transcript
Today at the House of Hacks, I’m going to talk about an impulse purchase I made several years ago that’s turned out to be one of the most used tools in my workshop.
[Intro]
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers. Harley here.
A number of years ago I had an Amazon order that I needed to fill out to get free shipping on. So I ended up purchasing one of these inexpensive digital calipers. It was just an impulse purchase. I figured it’s cheap enough that if I never use it or I don’t like it, no great loss.
As it turned out, this little thing has… I use it on almost every project. It measures up to six inches and anything under six inches I’m pretty much using this to measure with.
It’s just really, really handy.
There’s a whole bunch of these on Amazon. This one I picked up for around 37 or so dollars. It’s one of the more expensive ones. I’ve seen them on, just searching before this video, I was searching and saw them for under ten dollars. They’re so inexpensive, I’ve seen people buy them new, cut them up to use the measuring device in things like jigs and things like that. So, they’re really inexpensive for whatever purpose you want to use them for. Like I said, I use them for almost every project whenever I need to measure things.
They’re great for measuring outside measurements using these big calipers. Using the smaller inside calipers you can measure inside measurements. And on the end you can measure depth.
They have a zero button on them so you can zero it out. You either close the jaws, zero it out and then you get an accurate measurement. Or, you can use it to get the difference between two measurements. Take one measurement, zero it out, take another measurement and that gives you the difference between the two sizes. That can be really handy.
And it’s also good for transferring distances. You can use the ends, they are sharp so you can scribe a little bit. Measure one thing and then use it to scribe.
It does have an on/off switch which doesn’t really work all that well. All it does is turn on and off the LCD display which really doesn’t draw much power. If you’re going to leave these sitting around unused for a week, you really should take the battery out and that’ll give you much longer battery life on it.
That said, the batteries are 357 button cells. Little things that you can get at Walmart, Target, places like that for a couple bucks a piece. They’re much cheaper on Amazon if you buy them in bulk. So I recommend buying them on Amazon because I think they’re less than a dollar a piece whereas the cheapest I’ve found locally is like a buck fifty, two bucks, something like that.
They have a units switch that switches between millimeters, inches as decimal and inches as fractions. So that can be handy depending on what it is you’re measuring and you’re comparing it to other things and what units you’re most comfortable with.
The device also came with a plastic carrying case. Just kind of inexpensive, but it does protect it. And inside it has a foam cutout for the calipers and two places for batteries. So if you’re carrying it around, that kind of protects it and keeps it from getting beat up.
A really, really handy device. I really recommend getting one.
So that’s it for today. I’ll leave a link down in the description for an affiliate link if you’re interested in helping support the channel.
Until next time, go make something. Perfection’s not required. Fun is!
How well did Harley meet his goals by setting up the shop vac to be a centralized system? In this episode, the changes are quantified with measurements for noise, vacuum and air flow.
Music and sound effects under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 or 4.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Light switch effect: http://freesound.org/people/AlienXXX/sounds/151347/
Transcript
Today at the House of Hacks we compare some efficiency parameters of the shop vac's original configuration and its new one.
[Music]
In this earlier episode, I presented some problems I had using my shop vac, some goals I wanted to meet by reconfiguring how I use it and how I actually made some of the changes. In this episode I want to show some of the before and after measurements to see what actually changed.
To recap, my goals were to 1) have minimal daily setup; 2) be convenient to use; 3) be much quieter; 4) and all this at minimal cost. I attempted to do this by converting it to a DIY central vac system.
Today I am going to show how well I accomplished my goals. I’ll show what it takes to use the new configuration, a couple specifications between the old and new systems: the loudness, the vacuum pressure and the air flow.
Overall I’m really pleased with the ease of operation. I typically just leave everything plugged in, setup and ready to go. All I need to do is grab the hose and press the power button. Of course if I’m working on a piece of equipment, I have to do some setup, but that is pretty minimal. I just move the hose to the closest outlet and connect to the equipment.
One of the goals was noise reduction. I used a freely available decibel app on my tablet to measure the noise levels. Admittedly this is an uncalibrated device and won't give exact results, but it does give a good idea as to relative differences.
In the shop, the vacuum runs around 85 db.
And when it's outside the box on the other side of the wall, it runs about 70 db.
When it's inside the box I made for it, it drops down to about 62-63 db.
Overall a reduction of over 20 db. Quite a bit. For comparison purposes, that's like going from being next to a food blender to being in an office.
A side effect of adding the plumbing is reduced efficiency of the vacuum pressure and air flow. Devices are available to measure these parameters accurately, but they're not cheap and I was more interested in relative loss, so I hacked together a couple instruments.
First vacuum. This is a simple DIY vacuum gauge that I made out of a simple loop of vinyl tubing, some water and a ruler. I explained how I made it in this other video over here. One end is open to the atmosphere and the other is connected to our vacuum. The difference in water levels tells us how much vacuum is being generated.
As you can see, we’re getting about 38, 39 inches of water here. And I'll consider this 100% of baseline for what the vacuum is capable generating, for comparison in future measurements.
Connected to the first port it reads 31.5 inches.
Connected to the second port it reads 32 inches.
Connected to the third port it reads 31 inches.
So, the ports have a reading of about 31.5 inches of water on average or a loss of about 20%.
To measure air flow, I picked up an inexpensive anemometer off Amazon.
Connected directly to the shop vac, this reads as an overload. The vacuum is advertised as 150 mph, but I suspect, based on the noise of the anemometer, that it’s not really that fast. For the purposes of this test I’ll estimate this to be about 110 miles per hour (MPH). Like before, this will be the 100% baseline for the other measurements.
Connected to the first port it reads 89 mph.
Connected to the second port it reads 88.5 mph.
Connected to the third port it reads 86 mph.
So, on average, the ports read 87.8 mph or a loss of about 20%.
While there's a loss of 20% in both vacuum and air flow, in practical application, I don't really notice any difference. It still picks up about what I need it to in about the same way.
In summary, I'm really pleased with the new setup. It's much easier to work with so I'm more diligent at keeping things cleaner.
In conclusion, I’d love to hear in the comments below what you think about vacuums versus dust collectors as a means of keeping the shop clean.
If this is your first time here at House of Hacks: Welcome, glad you’re here. We’d love to have you subscribe. Through these videos I hope to inspire, educate and inform makers in their creative endeavors. Usually this involves various physical media like wood, metal, electronics, photographs and other similar materials. Thanks for letting me encourage your creativity. So subscribe and I’ll see you again in the next video.
Now, go make something. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just have fun!
Subtraction can be done two ways using binary numbers. This episode talks about unsigned subtraction, very similar to how we do it in decimal notation. We'll dive into the details in this episode of Bits of Binary at the House of Hacks.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Transcript
That may look confusing on the surface, but if you saw the last Bits of Binary episode, it might make some sense. I'll explain it in more detail in this episode of the House of Hacks.
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-It-Yourselfers. Harley here.
This is a continuation in the series on Bits of Binary. In previous episodes I explored the concept of binary numbers, how to count in binary, how to convert between binary and decimal and, in the last episode, I showed how to add binary numbers together. In this episode, I'll show the simple, obvious way to subtract them that's analogous to how we first learned it in decimal. In a future episode I plan to introduce the non-intuitive way negative numbers are stored in computers and how that impacts subtracting binary numbers.
Remember last time when we talked about addition, we looked at these two tables...
Let's remember how we use this with decimal numbers. We'll ignore negative numbers for now so we'll establish the rule that the first number has to be larger than the second. Since this half of the table is the same as this half, we’ll just ignore one side.
When describing the process, we'll use the example 8 - 5.
The process is to first find the entries in the table for the first number. Then, of those entries, you find the one with the other number in the header. The answer is the other header value.
Binary is exactly the same way, just with the much smaller table. Or written as a series of equations, it looks like this.
The first three probably make intuitive sense as they are the same as decimal. But the last one may not be quite so obvious. Remember that in binary the value for two is represented by 1, 0.
If we recall from grade school, with multi-column numbers, when we subtract a larger number from a smaller one, we have to borrow from the next higher column. Let's take for example 21 - 13 in decimal. The units column is 1 - 3. Well, we can't do that, so we borrow a one from the 2 in the second column giving us 11 - 3. This gives us 8. Moving to the next column we now have 1 - 1, giving us 0.
Binary works exactly the same way. Let's look at some examples in binary.
First something simple: 6 - 2. The units column is 0 - 0 equals 0. The next column is 1 - 1 equals 0 again. The final column is 1 - 0, giving us 1. This gives us an overall result of 100, or the value 4.
Now let's do something with some borrowing: 6 - 3. The units column is 0 - 1. We can't do that so we're going to borrow a 1 from the next column. Now we have 10 - 1 giving a result of 1. Because of the previous borrow, the second column is 0 - 1. So again we borrow from the next higher column giving us 10 - 1 with a result of 1. The final column is 0 (because of the previous borrow) - 0 giving us 0. Overall, the result is 11, or a value of three.
And that's it. Subtraction is a bit more complicated due to the borrowing, but again, it's a known concept just applied in a slightly different way.
Thanks for watching this episode of Bits of Binary. As I mentioned earlier, a future episode will explain how negative numbers are handled in a computer and a less-intuitive but ultimately easier way to handle subtraction. But in the next episode, I'll look at multiplying binary numbers together.
I've created a playlist over here that will be filled in as more episodes in this series are added.
If you liked this, let me know with a "thumbs up.".
If you have any thoughts or questions on this topic, I'd love to hear them in the comments below.
If you're already a subscriber, "thank you!" and if you haven't done so already, be sure to "subscribe" so you don't miss future on topics such as this one, high-speed photography, making a digital computer with 19th century technology and much more.
Until next time, go make something. It doesn't have to be perfect, just have fun.
Addition is probably one of the most common operations when using binary numbers. And it's really easy to do. We'll see how easy in this episode of Bits of Binary at the House of Hacks.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Incidental: "Zap Beat" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Transcript
One plus one equals... huh? I'll talk about how this actually makes sense, today at the House of Hacks.
[Introduction]
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-It-Yourselfers. Harley here.
In the last episode of Bits of Binary, I showed how to convert between decimal and binary numbers. In this episode in the series, we'll look at how to add binary numbers together.
Remember in grade school when you had to memorize this addition chart?
Well, OK, maybe you didn't have to memorize it, but I sure did.
This table is a matrix with the 10 numbers found in the decimal system, 0 through 9, on both the row and column headers. Each cell contains the sum of its row and column header. This gives us the sums for all the single digit combinations. 0+0=0 all the way up to 9+9=18. Multi-digit numbers can be added by simply thinking of them as multiple single digit combinations.
Well, binary has something similar, but much, much smaller. Since there are only two numbers in the binary system, 0 and 1, the table only has two rows and two columns. And it looks like this.
Or if you want to write it a slightly different way as equations, it looks like this.
Once you know this table, the process of adding in binary is exactly the same as adding in decimal. For example let's look at the decimal numbers: 321 + 181. Staring with the units: 1+1 = 2, 2+8 = 10 so write 0 and carry a 1, 1 + 3 = 4 + 1 = 5.
Similarly, in binary we'll look at 1011 + 10. Starting with the units on the right: 1 + 0 = 1, 1 + 1 = 10 so write 0 and carry a 1, 1 + 0 = 1, 1 + 0 = 1 again.
That's it. Addition is short and sweet. Thanks for watching this episode of Bits of Binary. In the next episode, we'll look at how to subtract binary numbers.
I've created a playlist over here that will be filled in as new episodes in this series are added.
Thanks to everyone who has subscribed to this channel and liked the videos.
Be sure to leave a comment if you have any thoughts or questions on this topic.
And until next time, go make something. It doesn't have to be perfect, just have fun!
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Transcript
If you don't get this classic joke, by the end of this episode you should. Today I explain how to convert binary to decimal, and back again, here at the House of Hacks.
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-It-Yourselfers. Harley here.
In the last two episode of Bits of Binary, I introduced alternate number systems in general and the binary system in particular. Next I showed how you can use binary to count much higher than ten on just your fingers. I closed with the question "How high can you count in binary on both hands?" If you came up with the answer 1023, you really understand the basics.
In this episode in the series, I'm going to show how to convert from binary to decimal and from decimal to binary.
Last time, I explained how each column in a number is the base number raised to a power times the value of the column. That sounds more complicated than it is. In our familiar base 10, or decimal, system, the columns are 10^0, 10^1, 10^2 and so forth. This gives us columns that represent units, tens, hundreds and so on. To get a specific number, say 123, you simply multiply the number in the column by the column's value. Or (100 * 1) + (10 * 2) + (1 * 3). Applying this principal to binary, the columns are 2^0, 2^1, 2^2 and so forth. Giving us 1, 2, 4, 8 and on up.
So, let's convert from binary to decimal. What's the decimal value of the number 10101? Given that each column represents a power of two and each column can only have a value of 0 or 1, this means its value is (2^4 * 1) + (2^3 * 0) + (2^2 * 1) + (2^1 * 0) + (2^0 * 1). Removing the items multiplied by zero gives us (2^4 * 1) + (2^2 * 1) + (2^0 * 1). Evaluating the exponents gives us (16 * 1) + (4 * 1) + (1 * 1). And all this simplifies to 16 + 4 + 1 or 21 in decimal.
Now that we know the theory, let's look at some shortcuts. Instead of looking at the columns as 2 to a power, we can look at them with specific values. Starting with the units column, we know it's one. Each subsequent column is the current column times 2. This gives us 1, 1 * 2 is 2, 2 * 2 is 4, 4 * 2 is 8, 8 * 2 is 16 and so on. Next, all we need to do is write the binary number below the numbers: 10101. And then simply add the values of the columns with 1's in them. 16 + 4 + 1 = 21 decimal.
Binary to decimal is really pretty simple.
Next, let's convert from decimal to binary. This is slightly more complicated, but still not hard.
We need to start with a binary column value larger than our decimal number. So, we start at the right side with one and multiply by two until we have a number larger than what we want to convert. Then working from the left we apply this rule: if the value we want to convert is greater than or equal to the column value, then we set a one for that column and subtract the column's value, otherwise, we set a 0 for that column and continue. The result is then applied to the next column. And we apply the rule until we reach zero.
Let's try the earlier example of 21 decimal. First, find the columns. Start with 1 and double until we have a value greater than 21. Then start from the left and apply the rule. 21 is less than 32 so we write a 0 and move to the next column. 21 is greater than 16, so we write a one below the 16 and subtract 16 from 21 leaving us 5. Next column. Five is less than 8 so we write a zero below 8 and move on. Five is greater than 4 so we set a one below the four and subtract four from 5 leaving us 1. One is less than 2 so we set a zero below the 2 and move to the units. One is equal to one so we set a 1 in the units column, subtract 1 from one leaving us zero and we're done.
If we get to the end without reaching zero, we've done something wrong and need to recheck our work.
Looking at the binary value, we have 10101, which is what we saw in the previous example of binary to decimal, so it all works.
Let's try 24 decimal as another example. 24 is greater than 16, so we set a one below the 16, subtract 16 from 24 leaving us 8. 8 is equal to 8 so set a one below the 8 and subtract 8, leaving us 0. Since we know 0 is less than all the other columns, we can just set them to 0 and be done. This leaves us 11000 binary.
That's all there is to convert between binary and decimal.
I've created a playlist over here that contains all the episodes in this series so far and will be filled in as more are added.
Thanks for watching and if you learned something, I'd appreciate a thumbs up If you have any questions or comments, leave them below. I try to respond to all of them.
So until next time, go make something. It doesn't have to be perfect, just have fun!
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Incidental: "Feelin Good" and "Cold Funk" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Transcript
If you recognize this as the number 31, you can skip this video. But if you want to know how to count to 1023 on just your fingers, we'll find out in this episode of the House of Hacks.
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-It-Yourselfers. Harley here.
In the last episode of Bits of Binary, I talked a bit about different binary systems in general and binary numbers in particular. You can click here if you're interested in this introduction.
In this episode, I'll start with the basics of decimal numbers that you may already know. I'll then relate that to alternate number systems in general and then binary numbers specifically. Finally I'll wrap up with how to count in binary.
When we were young, we learned to count on our fingers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
A couple years later we learned there's actually a special value that's no quantity: 0. And and with this new knowledge we found that 10 really isn't a number in the same way as the other nine are. It's a combination of 1 and this new non-value value. We found that at the core, we have 0 through 9 as our ten digits, not 1 to 10.
While were were still reeling from this new information, we learned you can count the groups of 0 through 9 and keep track of that in the "ten's column." So, now we could have 10 through 19 and 20 through 29 all the way up to 90 through 99. And then we could add a "hundreds column" for 100 through 199 and so forth. Numbers could actually be arbitrarily large by just adding another column.
This was mind blowing!
There were numbers incomprehensibly large to our young minds like "million" and "billion" with all kinds of crazy numbers of columns.
Then as we grew and got more sophisticated, we learned about something called exponents. These columns we were so comfortable with could now be represented by 10 raised to number of the column. So the "ten's column" was 10^1 and the "hundred's column" was 10^2. The "unit's column" took advantage of a weird property of exponents that said "anything raised to the power of 0 is 1."
It was explained any number could be split into its constituent parts by taking the digit in each column and multiplying it by the power of 10 for that column and adding the results together for the other columns. We found the simple columns we learned early in our education were just shorthand for much more heady concepts.
For example, the number 123 could be written (1 x 10^2) + (2 x 10^1) + (3 x 10^0).
If you're anything like me, this is about where the educational system stopped. There was no direct talk about this "5" being an abstract symbol for an underlying value. They did talk about it in an oblique way when they talked about other cultures having other number systems such as Roman numerals I, V, X, L and C. But that was about it. It was simply given that "5" meant "*****" this many things.
This was the decimal number system and how those of us now middle aged in the United States probably learned it.
If you had your young mind blown when you learned the ten's column was 10 raised to 1 and the hundred's column was 10 raised to 2, here's another mind blowing revelation...
The column base, the 10 so far, doesn't have to be limited to the number 10. It can be any anything!!
For example, this base could be 16 where you'd have the familiar zero and 15 other symbols. In this base, this many objects "**** **** **** ****" would be written as 10. Even though it looks like ten, it isn't. It's sixteen. And if you add one more "*", it'd be written 11 meaning seventeen.
Or the base could be 8 where you'd have zero and 7 other symbols. In this case the quantity seventeen would be represented by the series of digits 21. But in decimal, it'd still be represented by 17 and in base 16 it'd still be 11.
When dealing with multiple number systems at the same time, typically we put a subscript after the number to indicate the base for that number. So in the example of seventeen items, the previous bases would be written as 11(16), 21(8) and 17(10). This helps reduce confusion. But typically only one system is used at a time, and the base is left off, since it's implied by the context.
As you're trying to get your brain around all this, let's talk specifically about today's topic: binary. Its base is 2 so all we have is zero and one other digit: 1. That's it. 0 and 1, 1 and 0. Easy!
Let's look again at the columns we learned about when we learned about exponents. Just like in decimal where column one was 10 to the 0 and column two was 10 to the 1 and column three was 10 to the 2 and so on, in binary column one is 2 to the 0 and column two is 2 to the 1 and column three is 2 to the 2. That means the value of these columns if we multiply them by 1, are 1, 10 and 100 for decimal. And for binary they are 1, 2, 4, 8 and so forth.
Going back to our earlier example, in decimal, for each column's power of ten, you can multiply it by a number from 0 to 9, because your base is 10.
Binary however is much easier. For each column's power of two, you can only multiply it by either 0 or 1, because that's all the digits we have.
So, let's see what happens when we count from 0 to 10. For comparison, let's see both decimal and binary side by side. 0. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
See this pattern...
If we use a finger to indicate one and apply this pattern to our fingers...
zero, one, two, three, eight, nine, ten.
By continuing this pattern, on one hand we can count to the number 31. This is 16. Plus 8. Plus 4. Plus 2. Plus 1. That totals 31. So, how high can you count using both hands?
Thanks for watching this episode of Bits of Binary. In the next episode, we're going to look at how to convert back and forth between binary and the more familiar decimal numbers.
And I've created a playlist over here that will be filled in as more episodes in this series are added.
If you liked this, let me know by hitting the "like" button.
If you are already a subscriber, "thank you!" but if you aren't, be sure to "subscribe" so you don't miss future videos.
I'd love to hear from you in the comments below if you have any thoughts or questions on this topic.
Until next time, go make something. It doesn't have to be perfect, just have fun!
What do Morse Code, Braille and binary numbers have in common? Let's find out today at the House of Hacks.
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-It-Yourselfers. Harley here.
As I think about different videos I want to do in the future, certain areas of knowledge seem to recur. They're somewhat foundational. I plan on doing a couple series on these foundational topics. But don't worry. I'm not going to do them exclusively. I'll intersperse them with my normal projects and other tutorials. This is the first episode in the first of these series. And now, to the topic at hand.
Morse code uses short signals called dits and long signals called dahs in various combinations to encode letters, numbers and other symbols. The dits and the dahs can be represented by long and short sounds, or blinking lights or any other method of indicating two states.
For example, this is the letter "A." And this is the letter "B." And here's "Hello world."
The interesting thing here is there are two things, a dit and a dah, in the context of silence to separate letters and words to communicate.
Braille uses a two by three grid containing various patters of raised to encode letters, numbers and other symbols.
For example, this is the letter "A." And here's the letter "B." And here's "Hello world."
Braille is used predominately to allow blind people to communicate in written form. Interestingly, it was adapted from a similar system used by the French military to communicate on the battlefield without using sound or light that might give away their position to the enemy. So, it doesn't have to be used exclusively by the vision impaired. But that's a bit of a historical side note.
The important thing for the purpose of this discussion is to note it uses either the presence or the absence of a raised dot. A bit of information, in the context of other bits of information, the two by three grid, to convey more information.
Binary number systems use just zero and one to represent numbers.
For example, this means one. And this means two. And this means ten.
Computers use either the presence or absence of a voltage to indicate either zero or one. And they build sequences of these up into numbers to represent symbols, numbers and letters.
So, what is binary?
Simply, binary is defined as something having two parts. Each of these systems we've talked about today use just two things, within a context, to encode information. Morse code uses sequences of dit and dah. Braille uses the absence or the presence of a dot within a grid. And binary numbers use zero and one within a sequence.
In future episodes in this series, I'll be discussing binary numbers in more depth. How to correlate them to the decimal system you're probably already familiar with and how to perform mathematical operations on them.
There's a playlist over here that will have new episodes added to it.
And finally "Thank you" if you've already subscribed. You can configure YouTube to notify you when new episodes are available. If you aren't subscribed and you want to get those notifications, be sure to subscribe. It's free and contains zero calories. Finally, if you're interested in this series, go ahead and hit the "like" button, that'll let me know there's interest in this.
Thanks for watching and until next time, go make something. It doesn't have to be perfect, just have fun.
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